Interview With an Imp
by ElizabethGold
Summary: From the author that bought you Something Precious: We all know Rumplestiltskin's story, but no one has ever heard it from his own perspective. This is the recorded interview of Rumplestiltskin telling his own life story, containing all information that had been hidden up until now. This autobiography of sorts tells it in detail, and more importantly his side of the story.


Chapter 1

Childhood

* _On November 22, 2015, an interviewer from the Daily Mirror, having run out of ideas for the paper, finally decided to interview Gold. The interviewer and his intern assistant asked Rumple to tell them his life story…in his own words and from his own perspective. The following was taken from that recording._ *

So finally someone wanted to hear the story from my side of things, eh? Well well, dearies, it's about freaking time. Usually no one ever listens to me, but if you really want to know my life story than I will oblige. Glass better not spin this or I'll rip his goddamn heart out. Just kidding…maybe. Oh come on, where's your sense of humor? Did it die off along with Swan's happiness?

Anyway, I guess I should start at the beginning. A dark one may have the powers of foresight and to pick up on what other people could not, but I still don't remember being born. All I could tell you is my first memory, and I'm thinking it came from when I was a baby and living with my mother and father in that boarding house in the duke's lands. I remember it with pretty remarkable detail for that age, and I could still hear the sounds of crickets in the weeds and the sounds of my parents arguing while I sat in my highchair, staring at them with my dull, uncomprehending eyes as they screamed at each other at the top of their lungs.

"Jesus Christ I hate this kid! We can never go out, we can never do anything! And I sure as hell didn't wanna get married!"

"Well I told you not go after me that night you git...God! You're the one that mauled me in the middle of the night, Malcolm!"

I didn't even know what they were saying back then. I get it now though. Oh dearie, dearie dear…I think I should provide some context. I think it's time to explain my parents. I was born to Malcolm and Minerva Stiltskin in a largely populated village in the Highlands of the enchanted forest. It could be likened to Scotland in this land. I was born in this little city high rise…in other words a rickety boarding house where my parents lived, my father too cheap to actually get us a cottage of our own. You see, my father was a loser…not your average loser…but a loser that comes around every once in a lifetime. This was a loser who was truly devoted to his craft of being useless. Did he work? Nope. We got by because my mother was frankly a genius with our resources and my father's "commission". Let me just explain that he was a con artist too.

My mother, on the other hand, was a brilliant woman. I had no idea why she married my father but I sensed that she had regretted it from the very moment that she did. Well, back then things were different. If you got pregnant out of wedlock, most of womankind hated you and everyone called you a whore. Society in general stigmatized you. Therefore, my parents had to get married. Though at an early age, I feel like my mother had regretted me because of that.

I can still remember being a little boy of about five years old. My god, I was a handsome lad. I had dreams of becoming a knight one day, though most of the boys already in training were a lot stronger than me and a lot bigger than I was. I can still remember relaying my dream to her as I drew with rock chalk on a piece of parchment and cut it out into a pretend sword.

"Mama! One day I'm going to be a brave night and save the whole village from the duke!"

And after I looked at her with that big, toothy innocent grin, she merely smirked at me and gave a general look of disapproval "Oh son, I'm sorry but they already sent the little trolls into battle." Well, being called a little troll was nothing compared to the next year or so that she was around that followed. I can still remember showing her different steps towards knighthood that I tried to take.

"Mama, look! I drew a picture of a knight on a horse!"

"Eh…"

"Mama, look! I made my own armor from old wood I found outside!"

"Eh…"

"Mama, look! I worked for the blacksmith for a month and made a sword of my own!"

She looked at it with her mouth agape in wonder at first and I thought that I was finally going to get a compliment. I was getting ready for it, I was so ready for her to actually approve! It was finally going to happen! But then she turned her wide wondering eyes away from the sword, took one look at me and let her expression go blank again.

"Eh…"

Well, one night she couldn't take much more of my father's immaturity and me existing. I had woken up in the middle of the night to hear creaking footsteps as she walked out of our filthy apartment. My father let him go, he didn't care and she did it. She looked at me one last time before she left, and there was no emotion in her eyes. Not even one tear. We were what she was regretting, mistakes from her past that she was trying to put behind her. And me? I was her biggest mistake. We never saw her again.

It was just my father and I now, and unfortunately I had to take the place of my mother. It was my mother's income that basically supported the house, so I spent most of my eighth year of life working my arse off to support my deadbeat father. I took up odd jobs that were often too big for me. In the back of my mind, knighthood became a distant fantasy. I viewed myself more of a domestic hero, tackling jobs that were too big for me but doing it anyway. And my father? He kept goofing off as if nothing had ever happened, playing cards with his swine friends, playing cons on poor old ladies, and living as if he was a bachelor with no kid in sight. Sometimes he wouldn't even come home until five in the morning, mostly because he had passed out in the street.

But there was one thing that my father enjoyed telling me about, and that was Neverland. He had said that he had seen the land in his dreams and told me fantastical stories about it. A land where you want for nothing, no one ever had to grow up or work a day in your life(not that he would know about that) and where there were no rules. Now, for a nine year old boy, you would of course have to understand what that meant. God damn, it sounded like a dream come true. And that's why one night my dream actually did come true…and it turned into more of a nightmare.

My father had procured pixie dust from a seedy dealer of magical items downtown. Flying was an incredible feeling…it was one that I never wanted to forget back then but something I want to forget more than anything now. As the wind whipped through my brown hair, I felt more alive than I had in years. For once, I actually felt like a child. And I'll tell you something else…even though my father showed no evidence that he actually cared about me back then, he brought me with him and I loved him for that. However, I was too blinded by my childish excitement to see what was obviously coming.

We landed among the clearing of trees and plants that I had never seen before in my life. The whole land smelled of mystery and magic. I could almost sense even back then how powerful it was. However, there was an odd feeling in the back of my mind, as if something really bad was about to happen. I may have been just some dumb kid back then, but deep down I knew something bad was coming.

I can still remember the vivid memory of my father looking back at me, smelling of pixie dust, beer, and smoke. His grey-blue eyes focused on me for a second…and even though I was looking up at him with an innocent smile, all I saw was hatred and regret. I backed away slightly…right into something. I couldn't tell what it was at first…but it sure as hell wasn't something solid. Slowly and surely, I turned my eyes right up to see the shadow staring down at me with it's cold dark eyes, like an executioner waiting with fervor to chop off the criminal's head. My father looked right at me with a sneer and narrowed his eyes. "Sorry son…but I was never meant to be a father…"

I didn't know much about magic back then, but I knew something bad was going to happen when he waved his hand aside. The shadow, acting like a black guard dog upon command, lifted me up harshly on the ground. In the millisecond that it took it to drop me back off in the village, I had shed enough tears to create a new ocean. They had done it. They had both abandoned me and I was completely on my own. It wasn't that I couldn't support myself enough to eat…but where was I going to live? I had no where to go…but than a thought crossed my mind.

When I was a little boy, three kind old spinsters used to watch out for me when my mother and father were busy. True, it was boring for a lad to hang around three women that old, but I generally liked the old ladies. They were the ones that had actually given me good advice in the past and actually watched out for me and not me for them….like I had to do with my parents. They taught me how to spin wool into beautiful things, and they were the first ones that had ever given me a compliment. They said I would be spinning for kings one day. Come to think of it, they would have been right if they meant gold. I had no other option. As I stepped into the cottage and up to the spinning wheel…they gave me that look…that pitiful pathetic look. Afterwards, I kept my head down and just kept spinning…and to this day it's how I handle pain. You can say I've always been attached to that spinning wheel…I have been since I was a boy who wasn't wanted by his parents. The real fun however didn't occur until my teen years…


End file.
